


Back in Black

by UnintendedTrustfall



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 9x23, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mark of Cain, season 9 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 16:11:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnintendedTrustfall/pseuds/UnintendedTrustfall
Summary: Insight into Dean's thoughts during his final scenes in 9x23. I wrote this like 2 years ago but, here we are.





	Back in Black

The aching, and the throbbing and the terrible, terrible searing of the bruises and gashes that stretched across Dean's entire body, was being numbed by sheer disorientation. He was so dizzy and fucked up, he wasn't really aware he was summoning the Blade, he was just doing it. But he had to keep fighting, stop Metatron, keep going, keep going, keep go-

Something was screaming inside his head. He needed to take a breath, calm down, but he couldn't. He felt air escaping him, evading him, and when he looked down and saw the angel blade sticking out of his chest, it started to make sense. Air was leaking out of his punctured lung. He struggled with one functional lung while he felt the sick, sticking feeling of the other filing up with blood. The feeling was so excruciating and nauseating that he wished it would've stuck an artery, at least he'd go faster.

Being dead was no problem for a Winchester. The dying was the scary part.

Far off, somewhere barely audible to him, a painfully familiar voice screamed,

"NO!"

Footsteps, Metatron sneering, commotion, the whoosh of wings. Dean felt the vague sensation of tipping, watched the world turn on its side as it dipped in and out of darkness.

He was sinking into the numbing oblivion, darkness allowed him an escape from the pain.

And then it was back. Yanked back to reality. The reality that his collapsed lung was feebly trying to expand but the thin, fleshy walls were stuck together by blood. The other lung was working so hard to pump air into him that the punctured one tried that much harder to keep up, which only hurt worse.

Dean just needed to breathe, to stop losing so much blood, everything was terrifyingly distant. His only clear thought amongst the fleeting thoughts of survival was: at least if I die, I won't be a monster anymore.

Sam was there. And the familiarity of his little brother helped him stay in the present somewhat, kept him anchored at least to him, if not the rest of the world around him.

Sam was babbling. Something about bleeding and a doctor or a spell.

"Listen to me," Dean rasped, hearing the words but he didn't feel like he was actually saying them, "Its better this way."

"What?"

Right. That was probably unclear. But clarity and Dean weren't exactly on terms at the moment and terrifying as it was, Dean needed to try to be clearer.

"The mark," He elaborated, "Its making me into something I don't wanna be."

There. Clear as a bell.

The words had distracted him temporarily from the sucking sound of the walls of his lung trying to detach themselves from each other. He felt so scared, sick, and in pain, he just needed it to stop. But he couldn't die. No, no, no, Sam was here...

"The mark- we'll figure out the mark later, just here, give me some help." Sam said, reaching around Dean's waist he hauled him up.

FUCK!

That hurt so much more. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Cling to Sam, ignore the pain, Sam is here. Sam is here.

_If the situation was reversed, and I was dying, you would've done the same thing._

_  
...No, Dean. I wouldn't. Same circumstances... I wouldn't._

  
"What happened to you being okay with this?" Dean asked, afraid of the answer, but more afraid of dying with the belief that Sam let it happen.

"I lied."

A perfect, numbing sense of relief flooded Dean's brain, and for a moment, he didn't feel so much pain.

Although, his adrenaline was pumping now. So that could've been a contributor too.

"Ain't that a bitch?" Dean half laughed back.

They kept moving. And the farther they went, the faster the adrenaline seemed to fade. It was just pain. Excruciating, suffocating, dizzying, disorienting, pain.

"Sam, stop." He gasped, he just couldn't go any farther.

Sam lowered him down, holding his shoulders, keeping Dean upright.

"I gotta say something to you."

"What?"

Dean tasted copper, felt warmth seep out d his lips. He needed more air. He was gonna die. He knew that now. And no matter how many times it had happened before, it was just as terrifying.

But he couldn't think about that. He needed Sam to know. Know that he knew Sam was lying, deep down. Know that he knew Sam loved him. And know that he loved Sam too. That no matter how awful this final outcome, if he could go back in time, and stop Yellow Eyes and stop hunting from ever being their lives, he wouldn't have. Because no matter how fucked up things got, he and Sam never would've been the men they are today without it. And Sam, Dean decided, was the greatest man Dean knew. And he wanted to tell Sam all of this, but all he could manage to get out was,

"I'm proud of us."

And that was good enough, Dean thought, because that invisible shade beyond black was setting in, and he didn't see darkness, he didn't see at all. He felt Sam's body close around him, shaking with tears, and then he felt nothing.

 

For a second.

 

Then he felt something inside him being ripped out of him. And it was himself. His soul. He'd felt it when he got dragged to Hell. But he wasn't going there.

An hour he felt the terrible pain of the detachment of soul from body, but even though it wasn't attached, it was still floating around in his body.

Why wasn't he leaving? Death was leaving. This was something else.

And then- oh, fuck!

He felt his disconnected soul twist. Contorting, and shredding and mashing itself up into a bunch of tangled, black strands.

He knew what was happening. But accepting the fact, was different entirely. Slowly, gradually, he started to become aware of his surroundings. He felt his body healing itself, it burned like hell, but it wasn't the agony of dying anymore.

Then a voice caught his attention, it was Crowley's.

"Listen to me, Dean Winchester. What you're feeling right now, is not death."

His ability to resist the change was fading. He was accepting it. Worse, he wanted it.

"It's life. A new kind of life." He felt the mark send a wave of homicidal lust through his system, "Open your eyes, Dean. See what I see. Feel what I feel."

Oh, fuck yes. All the unwillingness, the fear, the guilt, the pain, was gone. He was going to like this.

"Let's go take a howl at that moon."

His eyes snapped open.

Everything looked different. This was his bedroom in the bunker.

But the words 'home', 'hunter', and 'family' weren't associating with the room, like they used to. This room didn't mean anything to him. It was just a room.

He sat up, and saw Crowley standing close by. He flashed a twisted smile at the King of Hell, and said,

"We've got work to do."

 


End file.
